A Political History of the Bible in America

By Paul D. Hanson

"Biblical history, enriched by many religious and cultural traditions, flows into and is intertwined with our nation's epic, both for better and for worse. To ignore that history is to cut ourselves off from our roots and to deny the ancestral experiences that forged our individual and collective identity."
from the prologue

This substantial work explores the interplay of religion and politics throughout the history of the United States. Paul D. Hanson traces American history back to colonial times, paying close attention to the role that biblical tradition has played in shaping the national story of the United States. He then presents a detailed study of politics in the Bible that is framed by the challenges and crises in American history. Students will learn how deeply religion has influenced both domestic and international policy and contributed to the nation's sense of identity and purpose. After laying these biblical-historical foundations, Hanson considers a method of biblical interpretation that can speak to the diverse nation of today. He proposes an inclusive form of public moral discourse that invites full participation by members of all religious and philosophical groups.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Release date: Aug 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781611646085

Paul D. Hanson

Paul D. Hanson is Florence Corliss Lamont Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has taught since 1971.

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Subjects

Preface

Politics is virtually synonymous with controversy, and religion frequently sparks discord both within a given faith community, between religious bodies, and among the nonreligious. Combine religion and politics, and a climate arises that can degenerate into rancor and conflict.

Yet the practice of infusing public discourse with teachings drawn from personal belief is deeply ensconced in the American consciousness. The contributions of religiously inspired movements to social reform and courageous leaders who awaken the conscience of the nation in the crusade for universal justice and equal rights and opportunities for all are often pivotal in the life of the nation. But when religious beliefs inflame partisan passions leading to conflict, remonstrance is understandable. From secular as well as religious segments of society, the call arises to keep faith out of politics, either because its effects on public debate are deemed to be toxic or because faith is understood as an individual’s personal relationship with God that becomes tainted when mixed with politics.

Two strategies aim to preserve a place for religion in the public forum. Advocates of civil religion present a genial concept of religiosity that is sufficiently broad to embrace adherents of all faiths. Reacting against the alleged doctrinal vagueness and tepidity of liberal religion, the second strategy asserts a bold, uncompromising version of faith that denounces attempts at accommodation. This politically assertive strategy in turn is shaped in service of two distinct theologies: one growing out of a politically reenergized wing of Evangelical Christianity, the other embracing a communitarian strand of reformed theology.

From this religio-political landscape arises the contours of our task. That task is impelled by two convictions that stand together in a tensive relationship that can either kindle the flames of cultural warfare or inspire initiatives dedicated to reawakening commitment to global justice, economic equality, and healing of an endangered environment. On one side is the mandate to incorporate the moral resources of all communities of conscience in a manner that does not set as a condition for full engagement a reduction of their convictions and beliefs to the lowest common denominator of civil religion but enables them to contribute wholeheartedly from the specificity and purity of their traditions. On the other side is the cultivation of civility in public debate leading to a vision of the common good and enlisting the public resources required for its fulfillment. A study capable of preserving this tensive relationship will inevitably require an approach that is respectful of the core beliefs of all participating communities and compatible with religious pluralism within the framework of the First Amendment. The question becomes, how do we reach the goal of the cultural blending of moral passion with inclusive civility?

Such blending is a complex matter. As is clear from the inconsistent nature of Supreme Court decisions bearing on religion and public policy, no paradigm exists that is capable of settling disputes once and for all, be it derived from the Constitution or from the history of judicial pronouncements. As for arguments invoking scriptural warrants, the picture is even more bewildering with opposing sides on issues like abortion and gay marriage citing Bible verses in endless conflict that discredits religion in the minds of many thoughtful citizens. Arising from this culturally and religiously complex phenomenon is an agenda that determines the structure of this book.

In the prologue we present a style of political discourse that is both intimately communitarian and broadly inclusive. It is predicated on the notion that personal and public attitudes and actions arise under the identity-shaping influence of stories. When stories are dominated by bigotry and violence, the influence they exercise is deleterious, whereas stories of healing and liberation contribute to the shaping of virtue and good-hearted civility. When the latter stories are shared, the moral capital of the host society is enriched.

In part 1 we apply the metaphor of story to the unfolding of the Epic that shapes American identity. What we discover is a legacy mixing instances of moral progress with impenitent failures in a nation seeking to define itself in relation to its own people, other nations, and the natural environment. Politically the picture is open-ended, as leaders and their constituencies devise different institutional structures in response to a changing world. Yet that picture is neither arbitrary nor capricious; indeed, over the course of four centuries it has been customary for American political and religious leaders to ascribe to Providence the growth and prosperity of the nation. Sadly, however, the full potential of religion to cultivate a society and world order in which the benefits of freedom and opportunity are placed within the reach of all has been trammeled by notions of imperial privilege, exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and discrimination. To gain a solid footing for understanding the mixed legacy of American political history, it is necessary to turn to the more ancient Epic from which the leaders of our nation, from colonial times to the present, and for better or for worse, derived justification for their actions. That Epic is the Bible.

Part 2 traces the millennium-long growth of that Epic with attention to the manner in which religious beliefs were translated into political institutions within the context of an ever-changing world. Given the common tendency for interpreters of the Bible to manipulate Scripture into the service of their personal political ideologies, a method is called for that will allow the ancient texts to speak in their own voices. That method is commonly called historical criticism, inasmuch as it is intended to clarify as accurately as possible the original meaning of a text, its author and audience, its original and subsequent settings. As a tool, it is neutral as regards theological or philosophical convictions, and hence it can facilitate the research of theists, atheists, and secularists, thereby providing a hospitable discursive common ground for adherents of diverse worldviews.

Subsequent to shared historical reconstruction, however, a choice presents itself. The path of interpretation pursued in this book goes beyond neutrality by identifying with the testimony of the Bible that God acts redemptively within the concrete events of human experience and enlists mortals like ourselves as witnesses to the meaning and goal of history and creation. For Christians, Jesus of Nazareth does not represent an exception to this historicist perspective, but serves as the paragon of God’s presence in the midst of human experience. This explains the fullness of our treatment of the words and acts of the historical Jesus as well as the story of Jesus Christ in the four Gospels.

Paragon, however, implies neither exclusivity nor supersession. Rather the unity of Scripture is secured by a theme that is woven from beginning to end in the canon and generously weaves into its fabric many extracanonical writings as well. That theme we call the Bible’s theocratic principle, which is the political iteration of the First Commandment. While testimony to God’s presence in the everyday lives of ordinary people is foundational to an authentic political interpretation of the Bible, a clear understanding of God as the universal sovereign constitutes its heart. For from that understanding alone arises the standard against which human governments can be held accountable: Given that God’s sovereignty alone is ultimate, all mundane regimes are penultimate at best, and that only to the degree that they mediate the qualities of God’s reign in the domain of the provisional structures of human government. To ascribe any higher status to the institutions of this world constitutes idolatry.

Application of the theocratic principle to the successive stages of biblical history leads to a significant discovery: No single authoritative biblical model of government can be found. Rather six distinct models are found arising in response to the ever-changing world in which the community of faith lived and to which it was forced to adjust. No clearer evidence could be given in support of the thesis that politics is a phenomenon that unfolds in the realm of the provisional and the ephemeral. It follows that persons of faith must live as sojourners whose true allegiance is reserved for God alone. And it is that identity that provides the foundation for authentic, albeit restrained, patriotism.

In the postscript we translate the insights gleaned from our exploration of the open-ended nature of stories and the dynamic character of the American and biblical Epic into a theo-political hermeneutic or, in plain English, a theory for applying biblical politics to the challenging issues of the contemporary world. Because those verities present themselves not as timeless abstractions but as applications to the concrete circumstances of human history of what inspired prophets and sages came to understand to be the nature of God’s reign, theopolitical interpretation is not a mechanical exercise. An ancient Scripture must be allowed to speak to a contemporary situation in its own voice, and this is possible only when careful attention is paid to the contemporary applicability of a given text.

Essential to the task of theo-political interpretation is preservation of the beliefs and values of each participating party or community within a climate of respect and civility that defends the right of open expression as robustly for others as for oneself. Such nonpolarizing public discourse is possible only to the extent that deeply held convictions are placed in the service of projects and policies fostering the common good.

Before turning to the task at hand, it is only fitting that I acknowledge the crucial role played in the shaping of my own story by two dear friends and colleagues: S. Dean McBride and Patrick D. Miller. Owing to the influence of these two Presbyterians, a Lutheran was able to appreciate the profound significance of theocracy in the Bible and the sublime beauty in the psalmist’s praise of God. To a younger scholar, Tim Castner, I owe a huge debt of gratitude for his careful research on the role played by the Bible in American history. I consider it my good fortune to have benefited from the editorial skills of Bridgett Green and Julie Tonini at Westminster John Knox Press. A solid start to the process of organizing my thoughts on the Bible and politics in written form was provided by the year I spent as a Henry Luce III Fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey. Finally, I express heartfelt appreciation to my wife, Cynthia, whose loving patience and encouragement enabled me to complete this study.

Notwithstanding the contributions of scholars in many fields, faults remain, for which I take full responsibility. But the burden that imparts is lifted by my confidence that future generations will continue to tell identity-shaping stories. To seven of those storytellers I dedicate this book.

Prologue

Story, Identity, and Making Sense of the Bible

I can only answer the question, What am I to do? if I can answer the prior question, Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?

—Alasdair MacIntyre¹

ENABLING STORIES

At the end of an archaeological season, it is a pleasant sight to ascend the photography tower and look back over a freshly dug section of the tel: A checkerboard of five-meter squares separated by walls, called balks, consisting of one meter of soil that has been left undisturbed. In the soft light of the sinking sun, the one-meter balks stand out, revealing through their hues of tan and red and gray the layers of civilization that have been uncovered in the past months of digging. Records have been kept of the findings discovered in each square, and the evidence from those excavated areas survives only in the notebooks of the field supervisors and in buckets of carefully numbered shards.

From a material point of view, archaeology is a destructive science. What has taken millennia to deposit can be removed in a season. Therein lies the importance of the meter-wide balks that remain: A trace of history is left for future generations to revisit in the ongoing task of recovering the past.

Looking closely, the observer detects colored tags attached to the balks at what appear to be random intervals. But they are not arbitrarily placed, for they mark significant strata in the long sequence of humanity’s mute deposit. A gray layer flecked with black chunks of charred wood is interpreted as evidence of Thutmose III’s destructive invasion of Canaan. A reddish layer is tagged as belonging to an early stage of the Iron Age on the basis of a distinctive pottery type interpreted by the expedition director as evidence of newcomers in Canaan whom Pharaoh Heremhab had named the people Israel. In this manner, pieces of evidence are assembled that shed light on the development of civilization and offer glimpses into our shared identity as human beings.

The stratigraphy preserving traces of our past is also found closer to home than a Middle Eastern archaeological site. We grow up surrounded by stories in both written and oral form, some describing our ancestral roots in terms of religious traditions, some drawing on our nation’s Epic, some retelling personal experiences. Such stories play an important role in the way we live and the choices we make, for the values and aspirations that guide us generally take less the form of abstract principles than of inclinations and intuitions rooted in our sense of origins.² By sense of origins, we imply something quite distinct from an objective newsreel account. What we retain and what guides us are not an exhaustive documentary, but a personal narrative with a plotline defining us as heirs to a distinct legacy. This is to say that we understand our essential being in historical terms, defined by philosophy as historical ontology and by ethnography in terms of myth/epic and ritual. Highlighted, like the colored tags in the balk, are episodes that retain for us a special significance in shaping our understanding of who we are and what purpose guides our lives into the future. We call such special memories paradigms.

As I look to my own past, I recall vividly the following episode that, in its blending of tradition and personal experience, imprinted itself on my consciousness in such a way as to assume paradigmatic force in shaping my sensibilities. When I was nine I received my first weapon, an air rifle. Brimming with manly pride, I entered the forest behind my home; spotting movement in a tree, I took aim and fired. Much to my surprise a bird fell to the ground, a very colorful bird that turned out to be a downy woodpecker. Not knowing whether to be proud or ashamed, I carried it home. My father chanced to meet me as I entered the yard. A conversation ensued that amid parental reprimand and juvenile sobbing became etched into my memory and helped shape my attitude toward nature for the rest of my life. To be sure, my heart had already been prepared for such a lesson by Sunday school Bible stories like Noah’s ark brimming with beautiful creatures. Future experiences amplified the lesson taught by my father’s reaction to my kill, like my study of Native American tradition in college that added Chief Seattle’s letter to Congress to my personal canon and powerfully reinforced my respect for all forms of life and my abhorrence of wanton slaughter. Later still, I embraced as a model the delicate balance achieved by medieval Benedictine monasteries between human needs and the dignity of all other forms of life.

Page by page our life stories unfold. From them we derive a sense of direction, ethical values, and in fortunate cases generosity of spirit and contentment with life. For many, an important dimension in the life story is religious in nature.

A number of years ago, a handful of students and I invited to lunch a professor of psychology to discuss his research on the roots of human happiness. One student asked, Aside from the genes we inherit, please name the source of happiness that most clearly emerged from your study. Religion, my colleague replied. Something deep inside of me nodded assent, for I have long experienced weekly celebration of the Eucharist as the wellspring of a profound sense of peace and joy. That is understandable, given the fact that that simple meal was as much a staple in my childhood home as my mother’s scrumptious Sunday dinner that followed.

Similarly, the fact that prayer has been a central part of my life surely has roots in my childhood experience of witnessing my father on his knees at his bedside as I passed (due to the peculiar floor plan of our modest home) through his bedroom to mine. Add to that the example of my mother, ahead of her time with her peripatetic version of meals on wheels for all in town who were ill and a kitchen well known to the hoboes who traveled the rail line through our mining town as a reliable source of Swedish meatballs and scalloped potatoes. Thus it was that religion, most of it embodied and unself-conscious, opened my eyes to the presence of meaning, even transcendent meaning, in all that surrounded me.

But what about the strains and pains caused by facets of one’s tradition that seem inadequate in the search for an understanding of life’s experiences? The intertwining of the warp of tradition and the weft of personal experience is not always genial. Knots appear. Threads fray and snap. In such cases, does one find it necessary to cast off what has been received like a tattered garment? Not necessarily, especially if one is heir to a tradition capable of transforming challenges into opportunities for growth.

Recently I began a seminar on genealogy in the Bible with an exercise in which each student presented a brief oral account of his or her life story, with attention both to events that had special importance in shaping personal identity (paradigms) and to the narrative thread that unified diverse life experiences into a sense of identity and purpose (epic). Since the setting was a divinity school, it is not surprising that religious roots were repeatedly mentioned, though there was wide variation in the nature of the relationship between student and tradition. One young woman, raised within an Irish Catholic family, had been drawn to the feminist orientation of a Unitarian Universalist congregation. A Methodist, after being shaken by several traumatic experiences during college, found in Greek Orthodoxy a home that addressed her deepest spiritual and emotional needs. A middle-aged man, descendant from a long line of Presbyterian ministers, was receiving instruction in Reformed Judaism. A young man raised within an Amish community was exploring a decidedly Epicurean lifestyle. Other cases were characterized by a greater degree of continuity. A woman of Armenian descent described a childhood of growing up in a close-knit Eastern Orthodox community that still served her and her own family well, even though she had adopted a more critical stance vis-à-vis all institutions. A student with a history of depression had found in his family’s Adventist congregation a safe and supportive spiritual home that helped him develop the confidence that he could recover from recurring dark periods of self-doubt and despair.

Walking home from class, I recalled my own pilgrimage within the Lutheran Church, one characterized by change, not only in my own religious understanding, but in some of the policies of my denomination as well. But throughout, even when introduction to a historical-critical approach to study of the Bible led me as a freshman in college into a dark period of doubt, my tradition provided sufficient constancy at the core, combined with elasticity on the margins, for me to ask questions, to test assumptions, and to grow in faith and understanding.³

When strains and tensions do arise in one’s relation to tradition, dreams can be swift to respond. At a midpoint in career and family life, I found myself in a dream at work in my basement wood shop, where I observed cement flaking off of a section of the fieldstone wall. As I scraped off more and more mortar and began removing the granite stones, a large glass patio door appeared. Just outside of it grew a lush tropical garden, lavishly arrayed in orchids and cyclamens. Directly beyond my private Eden lay a field covered with sparkling snow, with antique farm implements protruding through the white blanket. Just as I positioned myself to slide open the door to begin exploring, I recognized that I was gazing over the backyard of my childhood home and into the face of my recently deceased mother, as she peered through the window of our little red garage and, with a sternness I had never before seen on her loving face, lipped the urgent message, It is time for church!

Though some religious communities construe tradition as a rigid edifice guarding occupants from the world outside and accordingly repudiate the challenges of the wider culture, my experience was more flexible. In my life there has always been time for church. But the biblical-confessional congregation of which I am a lifelong member has welcomed dialogue with other perspectives and has not shied away from social challenges.

My spiritual growth can be compared to the dwelling in which Cynthia and I raised our children and continue to live. After taking occupancy as a young couple, we converted its Victorian single-family configuration into a 1970s-style commune for ourselves and two other young couples. As our family grew, walls were moved, an addition was built, and a fence was placed around the yard. What remained constant were roof, walls, and hearth providing safety and warmth against the rain and cold. Continuity and change similarly have characterized my religious home, for it has fostered a living faith, compassionate ethical principles, and examples of virtue that have provided direction throughout my life, but never in such a way as to stultify the benefit of encounters with alternative perspectives on life.

Flexibility capable of accommodating change becomes particularly important in the encounter with cultures or religions differing from one’s own. Some religious groups respond defensively, either by avoiding contact with the other or permitting contact strictly on unilaterally determined conditions. Why people erect walls of defense is understandable: To be genuinely open to an understanding of life that differs from one’s own can be threatening, especially to one who is less than secure in one’s own spiritual home. But walls diminish rather than enhance understanding, while border crossings can lead to remarkable enrichment of the stories that guide and shape us.

Consider this family experience. Our family was in the midst of a sabbatical year in southern Germany when the question arose: Should we take our three young children to Dachau? Not irrelevant to the question is the fact that Cynthia and I are heirs to a religious tradition rich in cultural and intellectual achievement, but disgraced by the complicity of the Deutsche Kirche during the Third Reich that culminated in the Holocaust. After considerable heart searching, we boarded a train to face the dark side of a tradition whose founder, Martin Luther, had authored alongside brilliant theological writings vitriolic diatribes against Jews and Turks.

The Dachau visit was traumatic beyond anything we could have imagined. Most deeply affected was eight-year-old Mark, whose innocent mind grasped what few adults can comprehend, that Evil can grow into monstrous proportions, defying limits we normally attribute to individual humans. We began to doubt our parental wisdom: Had we not elevated moral rigor above simple loving care of our children?

Then a miracle unfolded. A stranger crossed over a border to join us on the picnic blanket where we were trying in vain to comfort our distraught son. Though Sid Feldman’s manner was informal, he possessed the rare gift of a hacham (wise teacher). What did you folks do this afternoon? How could Hitler do that to those good people? Mark sobbed. Because he was a very sick man … and the message with which Mr. Feldman continued in a language comprehensible to children was essentially this: Hate is a terrible and scary thing. It hurts good people. But there is something very beautiful and far stronger in the world than hate. It is love.

We learned that it was love that each year brought this man from Hartford, Connecticut, to Dachau, to the very prison that had etched the number tattooed on his arm. His message was as simple as it was profound: Love is more powerful than all the hatred in the world.

In the months that followed, in which Mark awoke from nightmares screaming that Hitler was pursuing him, it was Sid Feldman’s words that were most effective in calming his soul. Long after the terror had gone, the childhood family experience of border crossing imprinted indelibly onto Mark’s life story a lesson regarding what it is to be authentically human. As for my own story, I remember that the shalom with which this wonderful man bade farewell embraced in an exquisite moment all the stories of bondage and freedom and the ultimate triumph of universal love that I as a Christian have received from his people’s Scripture.

FRIGHTENING STORIES

Thus far we have been reflecting on the interplay of personal experiences and inherited tradition as a basically positive phenomenon, not without tensions to be sure, but in balance leading to a sense of self within the larger world that equips one for the new challenges that life is sure to bring. Sadly, though, memory can also become the repository of an inner turmoil that obstructs efforts to find happiness and meaning. Many people are crippled by intimations of dread rooted in experiences of violence at the hands of those responsible for their safety. Particularly pernicious is the experience of abuse within one’s own household, for if one cannot depend on protection from cruelty and shame within one’s home, on what basis can a foundation of trust be built for other relationships? Commonly the deposit of inner chaos left by domestic abuse gives rise to depression and suicidal tendencies as well as the perpetuation of abuse in succeeding generations.

A Boston Globe report on domestic violence described the plight of eighteen-year-old Tammy Jo, a victim of abuse at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend since the age of eleven: Rarely leaving her father’s one-bedroom apartment, she chain-smokes cigarettes that engulf her in a haze of smoke symbolizing her inner confusion. ‘I guess I need help,’ she says. ‘I’m all stressed out. They say I’m depressed. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.’ The probation officer assigned to Tammy Jo’s case observes that her plight is endemic to the poverty-stricken sections of rural and small-town Massachusetts: The chaos is a diversion from the boredom, from the feeling of uselessness and powerlessness in these communities. These people live life really on the cuff. They go from emotion to emotion. For them to maintain any kind of purpose in their lives, they truly need this chaos.⁴

The downward spiral that traps people whose chaotic past vitiates hope for the future and a sense of direction in life is like a black hole ever sucking in new victims. Abuse breeds abuse and consumes victims and perpetrators alike. Caregivers working with such people are often plagued with the fear that they are dealing with insuperable odds and have arrived on the scene too late to help.

The disintegration of the sanctity and safety of the home and the breakdown of personal self-respect and purpose rapidly spread their cancerous effects into the larger society. School safety is jeopardized by rifle-bearing pupils. Adolescents developmentally at a stage for watching cartoons and building with Legos enter streets prepared to kill, lest they themselves fall victim to rival-gang assaults. Humans cannot thrive in the absence of a story, and lacking the positive kind of story that fosters self-worth, love of learning, and the patient pursuit of vocational goals, an alternative story marked by self-destructive habits and violence is likely to grow, ensconced in the motto of Nick Romano in the 1950s novel Death at an Early Age: Live fast, die young, and have a good looking corpse, a motto that has modulated into an even more lethal version in contemporary rap glorifying cop killing as a prelude to getting one’s own brains blown out.

The young authors of these sinister stories are not acting on their own but are participants in a wider loop. Their tutors and editors come from many segments of society: parents more committed to professional careers than nurturance of their children; politicians ranking reelection ahead of bipartisan strategies for accessible health care, equal vocational opportunity, and quality education; leaders in the advertising and entertainment industries flouting moral principles in promoting their products; and financiers showing no shame in their public display of greed and profligate luxury.⁵

Unfortunately, forgetfulness is one characteristic with which prosperous Americans seem richly endowed, forgetfulness that economic bubbles burst, inequality in the distribution of wealth is self-propelling, the ensuing social unrest spawns violence, and a chain is forged that historically has led to the decline and fall of proud empires. Also forgotten is the sobering fact that the plotline tracking the fate of a nation arises from an anthology in which the stories of all of its citizens are brought together, from those suffering deprivation in inner-city slums to those living in gated communities protected from angry fellow citizens by private police. The failure of our society to clarify its public values and to set priorities for improving the quality of life of all citizens is threatening to split the American epic down the middle, with one half trumpeting the smug theme, We’ve worked hard and deserve our wealth and bear no responsibility to others (or as Elizabeth Warren formulated it in her 2012 Democratic convention speech, I’ve got mine, the rest of you are on your own⁶), the other half sizzling with a countertheme, Playing by the rules is futile when the rules are rotten, so we write our own rules to get our share.

MISSING PAGES AND THE MENTORING ROLE OF SOCIETY

Life stories, besides containing positive and negative pages, sometimes include blank pages or pages missing entirely due to disruptions in the normal course of things or tragic events. Not uncommonly we read the story of an individual, separated since infancy or early childhood from a parent due to adoption or war, embarking on a search for a lost past. More is at play than an exercise in genealogical research, for something deep down feels an attachment to the missing person. Until the lost one is found, an aspect of one’s identity remains enshrouded in obscurity. Blank and missing pages thus underscore the key role played by story in the human endeavor of identity formation and discovery of direction and meaning in life. The pages that are missing from the plotline of many individuals place upon the wider community a particularly solemn responsibility.

Social environment is a factor in moral development that is ignored at great peril. Since the quality of a society depends on the quality of its citizens, and at the same time environment affects human development, we are viewing a circular process. Complicating the picture is the debate among psychologists regarding the relation between nurture and nature. Rather than becoming mired in what is likely an insoluble conundrum, it is wise to acknowledge the irreducible mystery that is an essential part of every person. Do we not observe cases in which individuals rise above impoverishment and suffering to build lives filled with dignity and purpose? At the same time, common sense leads us to conclude regarding the interrelation between a good society and good citizens that one cannot exist without the other. Therefore, it should be accepted as a moral mandate that every civilized society create for all of its citizens (and especially its most vulnerable members) a stable and supportive environment conducive to fulfillment of life’s full potential.

This in turn makes it the moral duty of every citizen to commit to the public task of ending inequality, discrimination, and unequal opportunity, which— sadly in the case of the United States—continue to spread in the very face of an accelerating concentration of wealth within 1 percent of the population. For far too long a land of promise has shirked its responsibility to foster an environment in which each citizen has a fair chance to compose a life-affirming story. But this returns the discussion to the perennial circle: such an environment can be constituted only by a citizenry equipped with the requisite virtues to comprehend the severity of, and then take incisive action against, hunger, racism, classism, prejudice, and global conflict. But how in a religiously and ideologically diverse society that is respectful of liberty and religious freedom can such virtues be defined and cultivated?

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY AS THE PRIMAL TUTORS IN PERSONAL INTEGRITY AND PUBLIC VIRTUE

The launchpad for the cultivation of integrity and virtue is the individual’s primary environment, namely, home and community, for there is written the introductory chapter that sets the direction for all that follows. This is a conclusion that has taken shape over the course of my forty-five years of teaching. Repeatedly my puzzling over the contrast between students who view the future with courage, hope, and generosity and those who labor under the burden of prejudice and insecurity that shrinks vocational plans to a competitive zero-sum contest aimed at wealth accumulation has led me back to the phenomenon of story. Aside from the genes we inherit at birth, what seems most determinative of happiness and fulfillment is the quality of the love and nurturance experienced in the seventeen years leading to high-school graduation. From my vantage point as a college professor, healthy students arrive with positive scripts. In conversations they speak fondly of relatives, teachers, religious leaders, and, above all, parents and guardians who have contributed to a robust sense of personal integrity and respect for others. By fostering in a child a vivid sense of his or her membership in a community of nurturance and purpose, by cultivating a home environment in which ample room is provided for reflection on childhood experiences as they unfold, and by providing a healthy balance between affirmation and moral expectations, parents and other involved adults function as tutors and editors in the important process of each child’s writing a life story. With steadfast, loving cultivation, that story provides the foundation for a life filled with integrity, compassion, and moral principles. And one by one, citizens are trained in a life philosophy that can renew the moral vitality of a society.⁷

STORIES WRIT LARGE: GROUP IDENTITY

The line between individual identity and collective identity is fluid, for personal stories provide the threads that are woven into the narratives that craft a sense of honor and destiny for groups of people, whether defined by nationality, race, or religion.⁸ The importance of a group’s story is especially vital in the case of people with a past scarred by injustices and cruelties. We don’t know who we are apart from a history of oppression, wrote Debra Dickerson.⁹ She described how groups of African Americans in the Chicago area assembled memorabilia of their parents’ Mississippi homes in the effort to recover their sense of history. Alex Haley’s book Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the television series that followed struck a deep chord in the American consciousness because African Americans as well as their lighter-skinned neighbors recognized in its chapters a poignant illustration of the importance of a communal account of origins. Especially within the ethnic diversity of American society, a sense of a people’s past becomes an important part of its identity.

As other groups celebrate their festivals and customs, it is essential for the development of an individual’s positive self-image to be able to display in story and enactment what it is that makes one’s own group unique. Like the nautical chart spread out beside the captain at the helm of a ship, a sense of ethnic origins guides a community through a wide spectrum of ways of being human. Identity rooted in history becomes especially important when a group is assailed by the public display of negative images that can tear into the sense of pride and self-worth.

In the history of the United States, black churches (and more recently mosques) have contributed powerfully to the restoration of a sense of history to a people torn violently from their places of origin and then subjected to the dehumanizing effects of institutions (e.g., slavery followed by Jim Crow) designed to obliterate awareness of rooted identity. As James Cone has shown,¹⁰ Negro spirituals blended biblical motifs with lived experiences in a way that fomented resistance to the twisted worldview of slave masters and built up a vision of the day when slaves could cast off their chains and be free at last.

The potential for reform that resides in tradition is illustrated profoundly by the life of Martin Luther King Jr. In one leader’s career the biblical office of prophet was charged with a fresh formulation of the biblical themes of justice, compassion, and liberty, with the result that a movement that had languished since the evisceration of the Sixteenth Amendment by Jim Crow legislation was put back on a track with unstoppable force.¹¹ But reform is not a one-time event; it must be renewed in every generation.

Sadly, the miscreants of complacency, greed, and moral impoverishment staunched hopes for a just society in the decades following MLK’s assassination. In a nation lacking the civic resolve to sustain a united offensive against economic injustice, a broken urban school system, inadequate health services for the poor, and a penal system more effective in criminalization than in rehabilitation,¹² frustration grew. The Occupy Wall Street movement provided a channel for the peaceful expression of dissatisfaction with the status quo. But unless business leaders begin to self-regulate on the basis of transparent ethical norms and members of Congress rediscover a productive bipartisan way to meet their constituents’ demands to take action on the huge problems facing the nation, those dedicated to peaceful demonstrations could be sidelined by those disposed to violence. As in tragic moments of the past, the nation’s story could turn ugly.

To the facile optimists and their prophets of weal who argue that the lessons of the past are sufficient to prevent the nation from falling into another major crisis, moral realists must point to the precipitous fall of Germany in the 1920s and ’30s. Deep divisions over foreign policy combined with economic volatility handed to unscrupulous leaders the opportunity to produce a revised version of the nation’s story that scorned all respect for historical fact, censored criticism, and punished dissent. National pride and the illusion of racial superiority trumped moral principles in promoting a policy of hatred, exclusion, and the resolution of domestic and international problems through military force. Leaders, disdainful of any aim besides the ultimate victory of their Fascist ideology, played on the wounded national pride that resulted from defeat in World War I and the perceived injustices of the Versailles Treaty to indoctrinate a whole generation of youth in the superiority of their race and the threat to purity posed by the mentally impaired, Roma, and Jews.

To be forgotten at great peril is the fragile nature of the stories to which nations appeal for identity, patriotism, and group pride. While national legends and epics can play an important humanizing role, it is sadly the case that tradition can be degraded to serve the goals of tyrants and demagogues. In the case of Nazi Germany, an Aryanized gospel wedded to a Teutonic myth of motherland produced a story promoting a nationalistic idolatry that in one crushing blow abolished the ethical standards of the Hebrew prophets, the reconciling gospel of Jesus Christ, and the whole span of moral philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hegel. Once the theocratic principle of the sole sovereignty of God was supplanted by idolatrous allegiance to the Fuehrer, and love of neighbor by unqualified devotion to the Aryan race, the moral restraints of law—whether construed in terms of natural law, civil law, or biblical tradition—evaporated. No longer was the intrinsic dignity of every human being taught to the young. Gone was the goal of harmony among all the nations as an inference drawn from the notion of universal human rights. The pursuit of international understanding through negotiation yielded to a policy of world conquest. The execution of those who dared oppose the crimes of the regime demonstrates the moral abyss into which a nation can plunge, once it replaces a national conscience imbued with universally recognized moral principles with values predicated on the divinization of native land. The lesson taught by history is clear: a nation’s story may enjoy monumental intellectual formulation in philosophy and theology as well as magisterial expression in art, but once hubris defeats modesty and racial supremacy extinguishes a deep respect for all cultures, calamity lurks in the gathering darkness. To our understanding of story a sobering dimension is thus added: stories stand in need of constant surveillance and critique, provided in the case of individuals by candid family members and friends and in the case of nations by a free press and the freedom of religious bodies to send their prophets to the citadels of economic, political, and military authority to speak truth to power.

Rather than learning from history, however, humans frequently choose to repeat history. In the decades following World War II the hatchet-style division of the spoils among the Allies and the subsequent growth of the Soviet Union into a nuclear world power again cast a dark cloud over the family of nations. Yet in less than a half century and with unexpected rapidity, the crumbling of Soviet control over eastern Europe culminating in the collapse of the Berlin Wall led to jubilation over the passing of the most recent example of nationalist idolatry and police-state control.

Though the restoration of liberty and the opportunity to rebuild democratic structures in the countries formerly under the repressive control of the Soviet Union awakened hope for a new era of world peace, that hope once again was short-lived. With the resurgence of ideological conflict and racial cleansing in Serbia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Zaire, the Sudan, Mali, and Syria, it has become clear that the assault on human rights has not ended, but merely morphed into a pernicious regional guise. Tragically, the tutoring of each new generation of youth in ethnic and religious intolerance and the practice of settling grievances through violence rather than arbitration has continued unabated into the opening decades of the third millennium. As a result, the global catastrophe that was averted with the thawing of the cold war is being stealthfully accomplished by starvation, HIV/AIDS, and regional conflict.

THE AMBIGUOUS NATURE OF STORIES AND THEIR ACTORS

To this point we have discussed positive stories and negative stories, which could suggest a world unambiguously divided between good and bad, light and darkness, the evil and the righteous. Such a Manichean worldview is often favored by national leaders seeking to consolidate citizen support. It has the twin advantages of imbuing complex situations with the appearance of moral clarity and of portraying homeland as the divinely appointed agent of world order. But it is no friend of the techniques of arbitration and reconciliation that moral philosophers have long recognized as the most dependable guidelines to conflict resolution.

Individuals and their leaders alike are reluctant to acknowledge that human affairs are generally marked by moral ambiguity. After all, most individuals fit the mold of neither Mother Teresa nor Adolf Hitler, but rather Malcolm X or Richard Nixon, even as most nations resemble neither Augustine’s City of God nor Idi Amin’s Uganda, but rather Japan or the United States. What is more, people often disagree in their evaluation of individuals and nations. The reason for disagreement is clear: we scrutinize and assess not from a neutral perspective, but on the basis of specific moral presuppositions. Such presuppositions are an essential part of the conceptual worlds within which persons and groups live, for they provide grounding for their identity-shaping stories. The alternative to morally constructed competing worldviews is anomie, a chaotic universe in which ethical discourse becomes impossible, due to the fact that the contestants are unable to identify the standards of right and wrong that shape each other’s judgments. Acknowledging the importance of moral presuppositions, however, does not solve the problem posed by diversity, but rather places it in sharper focus. At this point we shall turn to a historical retrospect intended to provide an adequate framework for examining the challenges contemporary societies face as they struggle to integrate into purposeful dialogue ideologically and religiously diverse constituencies, each seeking to preserve and be guided by its particular traditions and practices.

HOW WE GOT HERE: A HISTORICAL RETROSPECT

Most early societies developed their stories on the basis of a higher degree of group solidarity than is characteristic of modern societies. Moral discernment in the case of the former was quite straightforward: does an action conform to the group’s definition of the good and the right? In contemporary life that simpler world of moral evaluation can be observed in pockets of traditionalism referred to as affinity groups, that is, circles of people holding certain values and standards in common. It is also preserved in regimented professions like the military.

Consider a hypothetical episode in which a military council is evaluating the record of a soldier who has been recommended for a citation of bravery. Let us imagine that the criteriology of all of the officers is shaped by an Aristotelian understanding of their profession, and from that perspective they ask, Has this individual exhibited the courage, high spirits, and loyalty of an excellent soldier? The process moves smoothly to a decision. Or consider a church’s political action committee evaluating, on the basis of a shared Calvinist model of civic virtue, the record of a mayor seeking reelection: Has our mayor remained true to his election promises by funding programs for improving the quality of our schools, increasing the safety of our neighborhoods, and encouraging job creation in the private sector? In both cases the homogeneous framework within which each group conducts its evaluation imputes a clear definition of goals as well as the virtues requisite for reaching those goals. The resulting process of discernment is quite straightforward.

These days, however, such homogeneity of purpose is uncommon beyond such pockets of the like-minded. More typical is a college seminar where diversity rather than commonality of perspective prevails. Feminist voices are heard taking issue with traditional Roman Catholic positions, Buddhist insights challenge Western theistic presuppositions, and atheists deny the need for a transcendent basis for ethical behavior. Rather than drawing the conclusion that such diversity necessarily leads to impasse, picture the possibility that the ensuing discussion proves to be beneficial to all participants, demonstrating that civil discussion is possible in a pluralistic setting. Possible, but not inevitable, for discord rather than engagement would have ensued, were it not for preliminary agreement on basic rules such as commitment to finding common ground and willingness to compromise. The effectiveness of such civil discourse has been demonstrated on a larger scale in the approach to regional and international conflict resolution developed and effectively applied by Roger Fisher.¹³

Theories explaining the basis upon which productive dialogue can be carried on in a religiously diverse society include John Rawls’s neo-Kantian theory of overlapping consensus¹⁴ and Jeffrey Stout’s more pragmatic understanding of productive goal-oriented strategy and action.¹⁵ To this important issue we shall return in the epilogue. At this point it is sufficient to be open to the possibility of productive public discourse within a pluralistic society and even to the suggestion that discourse can be chastened and enriched by the questions and challenges posed to one another by participants comfortable with explaining their particular points of view while listening attentively to the arguments emerging from other traditions.¹⁶ To be sure, that ideal is easiest to visualize for those who already have experienced the deep satisfaction that arises from transcending differences to reach goals in which all parties benefit and no one leaves the table with a sense of having been marginalized.

To be productive, however, the vision of building trust dedicated to the common good must not be confined to an elite coterie of thinkers, aloof from the messiness of everyday life. There seems to be abundant evidence to suggest that, more than in earlier epochs, the contemporary world resembles Babel with its cacophony of voices promoting religious and ideological perspectives in such disparate language as to seem incongruous. This is not to say that sharp differences in belief and practice were unknown in earlier times. But forceful instruments of control were available for identifying and banishing heretics and promoting uniformity.

A common past strategy for taming the centrifugal effects of religious and philosophical discord was enforcement of orthodoxy through ecclesial bull or royal decree. Another was the emergence of a particular philosophical school to preeminence, such as the reign of Platonic thought from St. Augustine (354–430) to the early Middle Ages and the widespread influence of Aristotle and philosophy in the era of Averroës (1126–98), Maimonides (1135–1204), and Thomas Aquinas (1225–74).

The rancorous debates between nominalists and realists that followed, however, foreshadowed a tectonic shift in the political and intellectual organization of the Western world. The independence of scholarly inquiry that arose with the Renaissance, the erosion of central ecclesial authority and an emphasis on the freedom of the individual in matters of belief fomented by the Reformation, and the accompanying rise of independent princedoms and nation-states marked the end of hegemonic authority as the basis for cultural cohesion. The repercussions were vast and devastating, with the Copernican Revolution in science and the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) in politics serving as examples. A broken and divided world cried out for a new paradigm for reconstituting order.

The Enlightenment rose up to provide that new paradigm. Negatively, it indicted religion and its appeal to divine revelation as a capricious source of sectarian divisions, tension, and war. Positively, it announced a new instrument capable of banishing the contentious rival truth claims of religion and equipping humans with a tool capable of leading to genuine knowledge in the realms of science and philosophy, namely, reason. In the place of clerics, philosophers were to be the ones trained in clarifying universally valid moral principles and guiding leaders in applying them to matters of governance.

Like headstrong intellectual programs before it, the Enlightenment project soon revealed fractures in its basic claims. Having displaced the ancestral God and his earthly representatives, the high priests of the newly liberated humanity, the philosophers, could not agree on a definition of the universal good. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) explained why: the road to the Truth involved something more complicated than simply refining the learned instruments of investigation. An epistemological conundrum had to be faced: rather than discovering order, the philosopher was guided by internal structures of reason that imposed order on what was being observed.

The consequent history of post-Enlightenment thought is the history of the collapse of the ambitious project to build a universal consensus based on human reason. The nineteenth-century Danish philosopher theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) marks an important turning point. While repudiating rational philosophy’s attempt to establish a universal basis for truth, he argued passionately for giving wholehearted assent to an unabashedly Christian morality, based not on the alleged proof of reason, but as an affirmation of a human faced with the either/or decision between a self-centered aesthetic lifestyle and a Christ-centered (authentic) moral way of living.¹⁷

A final step into the conundrum that has imprinted the moral and political philosophy of the modern period was taken by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). While concurring with Kierkegaard’s dethronement of reason as a path to a purported universal understanding of the right and the good, he pressed toward moral anarchy by repudiating the privileged status that had been accorded traditional Christian morality and promoting the will to power as the paradigm of the future. Within the subjectivist framework of post-Enlightenment philosophy, there was in Nietzsche’s view no defensible basis for privileging the love ethic of Christ over other options. The human race, emancipated from the bonds of tradition and left to its human resources, was therefore to follow the leadership of the quintessential human being, one transcending conventional human society and through his self-accorded authority empowered to impose on his weaker, less willful mortals a code of law generated by his superior consciousness. In Nietzsche’s transmutation of conventional values, traditional Judeo-Christian virtues were subject to particular ridicule on the grounds that they were patterned after the docility of a submissive Christ rather than the assertive might of the Superman (Übermensch).

For our study, the significance of Nietzsche lies less in the specific program he promoted than in the conceptual world he introduced. Morality in that world was cut off from history and detached from collective human experience. Norms were to be dictated arbitrarily by the Übermensch without regard for obligations preceding or transcending the individual. Though no individual Übermensch was able to reign for long, a less tangible but more tenacious tyrant than Hitler or Stalin emerged on a stage denuded of moral direction. Denied recourse to the concept of universal norms and without the value and purpose imbuing a living culture’s traditions and practices, an ethical open market was created with rivals such as utilitarianism, voluntarism, Marxism, empiricism, pragmatism, and fundamentalisms of different sorts, all contending for the loyalty of adherents. The winner was the contestant most in sync with liberated, unencumbered humanity, namely, emotivism.¹⁸

In a society in which emotivism has triumphed, the source of moral truth no longer resides in traditions, practices, and institutions, but in the subjective consciousness of the individual.¹⁹ If that consciousness has not been trained in virtue within the context of a clear definition of social values and commitment to a public notion of the common good (Aristotle’s telos), it is only as reliable as the whirling compasses of unfettered human hearts. John Rawls, to be sure, sought to restore rational order to the search for a reliable moral foundation for contemporary society. But Alasdair MacIntyre has argued persuasively that Rawls’s neo-Kantian attempt to restore a shared sense of justice by appeal to the perspective glimpsed from under the veil of ignorance and benefiting from an overleaping consensus was deficient, inasmuch as it perpetuated the error of the Enlightenment by not recognizing that neutral ground and objectivity are not available to humans.²⁰ To be comprehensible and generative of a viable society, values and moral principles need to be embedded in that society’s traditions and practices.

So is the future to be conceded to emotivism? This question is one that must be taken very seriously by anyone concerned with the confusion that characterizes contemporary ethical thought, for the roots of emotivism run deeply in the culture. It did not triumph as the philosophy of choice by happenstance. Rather, it represents the most congenial philosophy for denizens of a new age who are enthralled with the immediate gratifications of a materialistic lifestyle, who celebrate emancipation from traditional duties and restraints, and who pursue personal advancement unhampered by concerns for social reform and global equality. Moreover, it would be inaccurate to view the ascendancy of emotivism as marking the end of the role played by stories in the formation of identity. What it does mean is that stories are narrowed down to private affairs within the lives of individuals and the affinity groups to which they belong. Storytelling in the traditional epic sense of the etiology of an entire state or nation becomes an endangered genre. Serious consequences follow. The effort to identify the commonalities constitutive of group identity and purpose wane, inasmuch as individual and affinity group stories promote a myopic vision of the world. Rather than building bridges, they erect walls, and the casualty is the sense of neighborliness fostered by the traditional belief that no man is an island. In the world of unencumbered individualists, if an inner-city child enters adulthood with a learning disability caused by exposure to lead paint or a young man on the other side of the tracks falls victim to gang violence, citizens (or should we call them inmates) neither hear the bell toll nor are they moved to action, for without the sense of solidarity provided by a shared story, we feel no personal diminution through the loss of anonymous others, or in the case of humans on the other side of the globe, through the loss of anonymous millions!

Emotivism then does not promote lively public dialogue but promotes an antisocial climate in which individuals become so enthralled with schemes for personal gain that they become blinded to the commonweal. In such a climate CEOs of corporations prioritize lucrative contracts above the interests of laborers and consumers on a scale that astonishes even their counterparts in the other industrial nations. And in ever-increasing numbers voters are losing confidence in the representatives they elect and whose salaries they pay in anticipation of efficient, bipartisan service dedicated to the common good. The reason for their cynicism is clear. In response to daunting fiscal, social, and international threats, they witness ideological gridlock, campaign-motivated rhetoric, and petty-mindedness tarnishing the stature of the nation’s highest office holders.

In spite of the enormous popularity of emotivism, however, its continued grip on society should not be regarded as a foregone conclusion. Clear voices can be heard in defense of the traditional American republican virtues of public-spiritedness and a value system that transcends individual self-interest.²¹ These voices look with cautious hope to the future on the basis of lessons, both positive and negative, from the past. They stress the importance of story as a source of identity and purpose for both individual and the wider society. But they also recognize a formidable challenge facing those dedicated to a communal approach to creating a good society for every individual and enlisting all citizens in contributing toward that goal. The challenge arises from the phenomenon that most emphatically distinguishes modern societies from earlier ones, namely, proliferating religious and philosophical diversity.²²

Diversity on the visceral level of the beliefs and values that define us and structure our lives can generate deep-seated anxiety. Two common responses are withdrawal into self-validating enclaves and its polar twin, an aggressive campaign to impose one’s own philosophical/religious position on others. Far more difficult is engagement in a process in which commitment to unprejudiced inclusivity draws citizens into developing a mode of civic discourse and political action in which all voices are heard.

Right at the point where the goal of enlisting the whole range of viewpoints into civil discourse seems within reach, however, another threat to political discourse and action arises. What makes its challenge the most difficult of all is the fact that its proponents come from the ranks of the most tolerant, public-minded members of the society. We are referring to a discursive etiquette that, for fear of conflict and with commitment to goodwill among all citizens, strives to find a middle ground by bracketing out of public debate the deepest moral insights drawn by faith communities from their respective sacred writings and traditions.²³ The dreary end products of such polite debate are often anemic lowest-common-denominator strategies and policies lacking the passion and vitality capable of lifting a community’s sights to a higher moral plane.

Withdrawal into the safety of affinity enclaves, aggressive attempts to impose one’s own values and policies on others, and tepid discursive etiquette: are these the only options available to a nation struggling with gargantuan domestic and international problems?

A WAY FORWARD

In invoking the metaphor of story, we have begun to build the case for an understanding of political process that reclaims the historical dimension of nationhood and the essential role of memory in